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MARISELA

“ S omething tells me you are exceptionally bored, Marisela.”

The words had been playing in my head since last night. I didn’t know if it had been intentional or not, but they reminded me of a quote from a book I’d checked out of the university library the other day. He’d rephrased it, sure. But the message was the same.

Which also meant my shadow man had been watching me for far longer than I’d realized. And not just in the shadows.

Was that his way of letting me know? Or was I reading too much into it? I couldn’t be sure.

My eyes flicked to my right, a puff of air parting my lips on an exaggerated sigh. Mama was drooling again. Her head dipping forward and her once-beautiful, long black hair now knotted and unkempt as it floated around in her soup bowl .

I loved my mother, felt a heaviness in my heart as I watched her deteriorate. But I was also mad at her.

I resented her for choosing a man like my father to spend her life with.

Because that’s what it was. A choice. She was intelligent, well-spoken, with the kind of looks that had men gawking at her wherever she went…

at a time… But love made you dumb. That was what she’d whisper into my ear when she didn’t think I was awake at night.

“?Que es esto del amor que nos hace ser muy estupidos, nena?”

Or I guess it was more of a question she was asking herself. What about love makes us so stupid?

I wish I knew the answer, Mama. It was just another reason I needed to stop obsessing over some lunatic with a mask kink, who seemed to enjoy being stabbed as much as I liked stabbing him.

The slamming of my father’s fist against the table had me glancing up from the fork I was twirling around on my plate and into a pair of deadened eyes.The hatred that crackled in the air was the unspoken type. Who needed words when looks said it all?

He hated me because I looked like her. And I hated him because he was a narcissistic asshole who should have been put down a long time ago.

Porque familia es todo, Mari. Family is everything.

At least we liked to pretend it was. Hence these family dinners every night, spent in insufferable silence while Mama was propped up in her chair like a posable doll, then quickly stowed away in her glass case when my father was done playing with her.

“Marisela,” he hissed my name from across the table,

“Yes, Papá ?” I hummed in reply, intentionally thickening my accent the more he tried to hide his.

It was a newer habit, his way of erasing who we were while he did his best to blend in with his rich white friends. We weren’t even allowed to speak Spanish in the house anymore, not that I had anyone to speak it with. My father surrounded himself with the type of men he was trying to emulate.

Women-hating pigs.

He lifted a threatening brow, and I slumped in my seat as I begrudgingly corrected myself. “Yes, Father?”

“I have someone I’d like you to meet,” he grunted in a way that told me I wouldn’t like it one bit. But it wasn’t a request. It was an order. I didn’t have an option. At least not right now.

I nodded once and resumed swirling my fork around my plate.

The rest of dinner consisted of Mama mumbling to herself every now and then, and my father ignoring her until he was done eating.

Then he quickly pushed up from the table and slammed his chair back in place, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder at us as he slinked away to his office and closed the door.

But family was everything, right?